Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Editorial
Freedom from fear is also a right
The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper, The Examiner
Feb 19, 2007 3:00 AM (8 hrs ago)
Current rank: # 20 of 13,522 articles
WASHINGTON - District residents have been the guinea pigs in a failed 30-year-old experiment in social engineering. Three decades of strict gun control laws have not made the capital citys streets safer. On the contrary, since 1976, D.C.s murder rate has increased 32 percent, and violent crimes committed during the first few weeks of 2007 by gun-wielding thugs are up a staggering 50 percent over the same period last year.
None other than former Mayor Marion Barry, now representing Ward 8 on the D.C. Council, is waving the white flag of surrender by introducing legislation to provide potential victims a limited window of opportunity to arm themselves in self defense. We are in the midst of a gun-violence epidemic, Barry said. Everybody but the criminals are abiding by the citys gun control laws [which] have long been among the toughest in the nation. Not only are District residents forbidden from owning firearms not registered before 1977, they must also keep legal rifles and shotguns at home, unloaded, disassembled and useless against an armed intruder.
Barry deserves credit for stating the obvious, considering that most city officials shrink from accounting for the 2,656 illegal firearms recovered last year by the Metropolitan Police Department weapons current gun control laws were supposed to keep out of the city.
...
Every few years they have this deal call cash for guns, it is really a great thing because you can steal firearms and then trade them in for cash and it is a revovling door in the crime market in D.C. What bothers me is that our capitol is only safe in the tourist areas. Outside that and you risk you life and our capitol should be the safety place in the world!
Why limit my nature walk to DC? Don't I have great odds of getting shot in any city?
it is a shit hole.
Adding guns is never a good idea. I support the right to bear arms in the United States! I own several guns and they are for home protection and recreation such as target practice. Our laws are so twisted and the law makers have protected the criminals. So they can run amuck and do as they please. Marion Barry carries a gun everywhere and does he need it? No he carries it because he can.
That's good you've never been invaded, and the german sheppard seeems like protection enough!
You live in a different situation than I, and deal with more fear I believe, so I can't really put myself in your place here... maybe I would be a gun owner in a different life... who knows.
That's good you've never been invaded, and the german sheppard seeems like protection enough!
You live in a different situation than I, and deal with more fear I believe, so I can't really put myself in your place here... maybe I would be a gun owner in a different life... who knows.
Kennesaw has the lowest crime rate of any similar-sized city in the country.
In 1982 the Kennesaw city council unanimously passed a law requiring heads of households to possess a firearm to protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants. Some said there would be shootings in the streets and violence in the homes. But that wasn't the case.
Since the ordinance became law, crime has declined 89% in Kennesaw while only declining 10% statewide. According to Robert Jones, president of the Kennesaw Historical Society, after it initially dropped, it has stayed at the same low level for the past 16 years.
http://publicrights.org/Kennesaw/GunsPreventCrime.html
An interview with
John R. Lott, Jr.
author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws
John R. Lott, Jr. is a resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute. He was previously the John M. Olin Visiting Law and Economics Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.
Having a gun is like a hobby of sorts if you played rugby how would you explain to the skeptics that it was harmless fun? Well you can get hurt in rugby much like you can with a firearm these are risks in life. I use responsibility and that is why I haven't gotten hurt today. And if you live in more fear than I, then I'd ask why do you continue to except that way of life?
